Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Delivery of oxygen to a living tissue and the amount of oxygen used by living tissues can be indispensable pieces of information for medical personnel, such as doctors. The body of a living creature receives oxygen through blood. Therefore, monitoring the amount of oxygen in the blood is extremely important, especially during surgery, in intensive care units (ICU), or in emergency-care situations, among other examples.
In some techniques for determining the amount of oxygen in the blood, blood is first drawn from a patient, and then transported to a device, such as a co-oximeter, to determine a blood-oxygen level. However, the time required to draw blood and determine the blood-oxygen level in accordance with such techniques may result in a delay that is unacceptable in situations such as, among other examples, post-cardiac surgery, or treatment of head trauma, where brain tissue has only minutes to live after the blood oxygen supply is depleted. As such, what is needed is a device that reliably provides medical personnel with substantially immediate and accurate information about the amount of oxygen in the blood.